Digital Photocopiers Have Internal Hard Drives That Store Scanned Documents, Which Could Place Your Personal Information at Risk-Truth!

Digital Photocopiers Have Internal Hard Drives That Store Scanned Documents, Which Could Place Your Personal Information at Risk-Truth!

Summary of eRumor:
This is a forwarded video of a CBS News report about modern digital photocopiers that warns that personal information could be at risk because the multifunction office machine scans and saves your documents on an internal hard disk drive.
The Truth:
The CBS report aired April 15, 2010 and is posted on the CBS News Web site. It said, "Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine." CLICK for report

The report showed how in a matter of thirty minutes, hard disk drives were removed from a number of used photo copiers which were purchased for about $300 each. The drives were then connected to a personal computer running data retrieving software that was available free on the internet. In a matter of 12 hours the software had extracted personal information, social security numbers, medical records and company checks. One of the photocopiers came from a police department and contained confidential criminal records.

A spokesperson from the Xerox Corporation told TruthOrFiction.com that their company has been aware of this problem and developed a solution to wipe documents from mass storage devices using a feature called "Image Overwrite." This is a feature that electronically shreds information stored on internal hard disk drives.

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The company website has information posted on this features that has been installed in Xerox equipment since 2008. Click for Xerox web site.
updated 05/10/10

A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:

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VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION !